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An anonymous reader writes "Istanbul's popular (and crowded) Istiklal shopping, cafe and restaurant street is being outfitted with 64 wirelessly controlled, tamperproof face recognition cameras attached to a computer system capable of scanning 15000 faces in a moving crowd per second for a positive match. The Samanyolu article (badly translated by Google) states that 3 cameras are in place so far and that if trials are successful, this will mark the first time such a system, previously used by Scottland Yard and normally reserved for indoor security use, is put to use in a public outdoor setting. It also notes that each camera controlled by the system is capable of "locking onto" the faces of known criminals and pickpockets detected in the crowd and "tracking" their movements for up to 300 metres before the next, closer placed camera takes over.

While the article doesn't state it outright, it would appear likely that the outdoor face recognition system, if "successful", will be expanded to other crowded areas of Istanbul as well, which has already seen a dazzling increase in the number of installed plain-vanilla (non face-recognizing) CCTV cameras in recent years.

The ruling "moderate Islamist" AKP party appears to frame these and other e-government initiatives as "keeping step with the times", "keeping step with other major world cities" and "making living safer, easier and more efficient through the targeted use of electronic technology".

Its secular critics on the other hand argue that everything and everyone under the sun is rapidly becoming "electronically trackable" thanks to the omnipresence of mobile phones and gratuitous overuse and overapplication of these installed electronic systems, and that these systems will, eventually, form a dense surveillance grid that could turn daily life for Turks (and secular Turks critical of the current government in particular) into living in a veritable Big Brother House.